About the Structure of "Kairotic Technologization"

Like many hypertexts, this article points in multiple directions simultaneously, in an attempt to inhabit a comfortable zone between thesis-structured argument and response-driven exploration/open-ended possibility/wonder/ramification (or whatever it is respondents wish to do with their mouse/mind). Another way of describing this text (texts)--in terms of one of our arguments presented--is to place it between "context-text" (or chaos-cosmos). Another, more succinct, way of describing it is to call it "stuff." There's a lot of our stuff in here and the article points to lots of stuff out there somewhere on the Web. We do try to maintain some gravitational pull towards a limited collection of topics and themes; in any case, the loose heading of "stuff" provides a suitably comprehensive designation.

The reason for sharing one's stuff in a webbed rather than print article is accuracy. If one's topic resists the divisions and organization of monologic, linear text, a traditional, "closed essay" approach will not provide adequate access to relevant content. The closed essay is inimical to the indulgences of "stuff sharing." In its valorization of unity and containment, it enforces a limitation of scope and ramification. With the Web, however, promiscuous stuff sharing has become, for the first time in the history of text, a practical possibility. The dispersed digressiveness of the Web as a medium provides a more inclusive spread of relevant topics, and thus enables a fuller, even more "coherent" presentation of a subject. As a medium that is polyvocal, fragmentary, infinite, decentered, and complex--the Web provides a means of presenting stuff systematically and deeply in the spirit of complexity and scale that has been described suggestively in chaos theory.

As for practical navigation of the texts of this article, the sections may be read in any order. Each section begins with a head note (brown text) that provides some context for the section. The header and footer navigational tables are identical on each of the pages.